Water and soil is the material basis of human being. Soil erosion is a major environmental issues of common concern nowadays. Especially in the vast developing countries, soil erosion has become an important restricting factor in local economic development. Soil erosion induces serious environmental and ecological disaster consequences including soil quality degradation, destruction of land resources, water scarcity, water pollution, environmental degradation and sediment discharged to produce a large number of river siltation, increased risk of floods to threat downstream area.
Chemical erosion control technology is emerging as a class of non-traditional soil and water conservation measures. Chemical controls soil erosion primarily through the application of polymers to improve soil properties, increase soil aggregate stability, to prevent clay dispersion thus reduce the soil crust, increase infiltration, reduce surface runoff and soil erosion. Synthetic polymer were started to used in soil improvement from 1950s. During the researching work, PAM (polyacrylamide) was proved a promising additive to maintain soil structure and soil aggregate stability as well as maintain high infiltration, low runoff (U.S. Pat. No. 2,625,529, WO2007047481). Celluloses and water absorbent lignine cellulose (US20100285962, US20070180763) were also identified for such a purpose. Up to now only polyacrylamides have been intensively investigated for on soil erosion prevention and its role in agriculture in a large number of countries. The results indicated that the effect of water and soil conservation has its application scope, like gentle slope and some types of soil. However for the land with poor texture or alkaline soil and on steep slopes PAM can not work well. Therefore, more effective soil erosion control materials and techniques are to be further developed to meet the diverse, ever-changing requirements in different types of soil and environment.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved soil additive to prevent the soil erosion and having an increased efficacy, relative to the total amount of additive used.